A gov't ban pretty much ensures they will have no customers to protect. Their choices are "give it up", or "GTFO."

Also, why bother boycotting them? Are you saying they never should have tried to cover their customers asses in the first place, and should have stuck with their competitions decision of not bothering with encryption? I say RIM deserves points for trying.

As far as I know, even the Saudi's have access to encrypted data only. Nonetheless, they will now have a way to map social network, e.g. terrorist suspect xyz sends a lots of messages to pqr. This may be enough for them. With no human rights as well as acceptance of torture (I lived there for a while so not making this up) they can pick both xyz and pqr in the middle of the night and drive bamboo's up orifices to get what they want.

there is no ethical reason to give away your REAL customer's security.

the government is not your customer even though you sell a lot to them.

PEOPLE (who deserve privacy) are your customers.

If RIM caves, the correct response to this is to divest yourself of any stocks or funds that involve this company. If they cave, it will be because money is more important to them than the refusal to support institutionalized domestic spying, same story as always. If they cave, they would do it to preserve a profitable market. If the response to that causes their stock to be devalued and the company to have a very hard time retaining any capital, it would send the message that if you really care about profit, this is the wrong action to take.

So, like with so many things, it's up to us. It's a matter of what we will and won't tolerate, what we will and won't support and go along with. Any single-mindedness regarding profit can also be used to discourage companies from following this example. In that sense it is both the problem and a solution. Which it will be is ultimately up to us, up to We the People. If we don't care enough to back that up with action, neither should RIM.

If RIM caves, the correct response to this is to divest yourself of any stocks or funds that involve this company. If they cave, it will be because money is more important to them than the refusal to support institutionalized domestic spying, same story as always.

History seems to show that this is a sure indication that it's time to buy RIM stock;)

While I agree with you in principle, as the Indian government said, they do things differently there.

One of my other principles is to let others live their lives the way they want to. If India wants to revolt against its government to change the rules, I'll support them. However, if they aren't willing to change their governments rules or if they want the rules that way for some reason, then thats their problem not mine.

Who are you to impose you particular view of how the world should work on others? Wha

I am not sure whether/. users appreciate the whole situation in India.Terrorists using blackberry is an actual problem [telegraph.co.uk] here. Also, the threat of terrorists here is a real one - unlike in most other countries - with many countries actually pouring money in to push [indiatimes.com] terrorism to India.

Before the current home minister came in with somewhat tight security and controls, we used to have a lot [wikipedia.org] of terrorist attacks in India. The current homeminister radically decreased the number of incidents by overall increasing the security - while not too much impinging on the privacy till now.

Most of the security was through surveillance, which was being hamstrung by the enemy using blackberry for communication. So by creating this hullaballoo and then RIM publicly accepting it, terrorist will stop using blackberry for communication, thus increasing the effectiveness of surveillance.

I do accept the view point of - those who gives up privacy for security deserves neither.But terrorism is such a big actual problem here - with more than 800 sleeper cells currently, people are going to accept this - otherwise there is going to be daily bombings and deaths.

Hmm, so you are basically saying, before blackberry came, there was no terrorism in India? Or blocking blackberry will somehow close all aveues of encryption(ssh etc.,?)Its due to idiots like you that we hardly have any privacy left in India, and the corrupt govt officials snoop on anybody at will.

I am not sure whether/. users appreciate the whole situation in India.
Terrorists using blackberry is an actual problem [telegraph.co.uk] here. Also, the threat of terrorists here is a real one - unlike in most other countries - with many countries actually pouring money in to push [indiatimes.com] terrorism to India.

Before the current home minister came in with somewhat tight security and controls, we used to have a lot [wikipedia.org] of terrorist attacks in India. The current homeminister radically decreased the number of incidents by overall increasing the security - while not too much impinging on the privacy till now.

Most of the security was through surveillance, which was being hamstrung by the enemy using blackberry for communication. So by creating this hullaballoo and then RIM publicly accepting it, terrorist will stop using blackberry for communication, thus increasing the effectiveness of surveillance.

I do accept the view point of - those who gives up privacy for security deserves neither.
But terrorism is such a big actual problem here - with more than 800 sleeper cells currently, people are going to accept this - otherwise there is going to be daily bombings and deaths.

In my view of viewing things terrorism is merely a symptom of far deeper underlying problems with government and society and with international affairs. In the face of that, secure e-mail is barely a footnote. If a government can completely and totally monitor all communications by all people within its borders, it has succeeded only in addressing a means to an end. It has not and likely will not address why so many people want to become terrorists in the first place, what motivates them, why they do what they do, and how to actually prevent this phenomenon by addressing its root causes.

Nobody ever wants to really look at root causes. They're too busy making sure a good crisis "doesn't go to waste" as an Obama staffer put it (don't think for a moment that this idea is limited to USA politics). They just want to exert as much control as possible over the means to an end. They want to make terrorism as difficult as possible by those who wish to carry it out because that means more police power for them. No one seems to want to make fewer people consider becoming terrorists in the first place. Addressing the type of political and social unrest that makes once-harmless people consider such drastic measures might mean taking a hard look at foreign and domestic policy with a willingness to drastically alter the status quo towards a pro-freedom position, and no one in power really wants to do that. It would reduce their power.

I'm not saying that terrorists are something other than scum. They are. I'm saying that you are dealing with nations that, based on their actions, have the attitude of "well if we're going to have terrorism anyway, things like the USA's Patriot Act that we could have never passed without active attacks sure do sweeten the deal". That's part of the problem. Anyone who gets what they want due to terrorism, directly or indirectly, is part of the problem of terrorism. Unfortunately that includes many state actors.

Does that apply to the 9/11 terrorists too, or does your statement apply only to anti-India terrorists?

I didn't have those in India on my mind when I said that "One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter." Actually at the tyme I was thinking of Israeli Independence fighters, or terrorists. Irgun [wikipedia.org], the predecessor to today's Likud political party was even classified as a terrorist group by the new Israeli government after independence. Lehi [wikipedia.org], commonly called the Stern Gang, split off from Ir

Not sure why you've written that long post about Israel and the Arabs as a response to this article that talks about India!

I answered as I did because I was asked "Does that apply to the 9/11 terrorists too, or does your statement apply only to anti-India terrorists?" I even included it, and only it, in my post. If you can't understand that, then I don't know what else to say.

In my view of viewing things terrorism is merely a symptom of far deeper underlying problems with government and society and with international affairs.

That much is true. The underlying problem may or may not exist in the country that is being targeted. It may have once existed, and later generations are feeling the echos. It almost certainly exists in some form in the nation producing terrorists.

(I don't know about terrorism in India, specifically. I suspect it ultimately stems from the separation from Pakistan in the '40s.)

I am not sure whether/. users appreciate the whole situation in India.Terrorists using blackberry is an actual problem here.

I'm not sure whether/. users appreciate the whole situation in India. Terrorists using human language is an actual problem here. Therefore, we must now eavesdrop on all conversations. Furthermore, whispering is now forbidden, as you might be quiet enough that our microphones can't hear you. Speak loudly and clearly citizen - move along, nothing to see hear.

While I agree with you in principle, as the Indian government said, they do things differently there.

Sorry, but the Indian gov't needs to go fuck itself.

With respect to Blackberry, the India doesn't do things differently. India wants to do things differently, and quite frankly everyone at RIM is a bunch of fucktards for giving in to the first country that decided to publicly swing its cock in their direction.

I quite personally don't give a flying fuck whether or not any government listens in on what it chooses. But I'll say for damned certain that if something is touted as "secure" and "encrypted," hav

One of my other principles is to let others live their lives the way they want to. If India wants to revolt against its government to change the rules, I'll support them. However, if they aren't willing to change their governments rules or if they want the rules that way for some reason, then thats their problem not mine.

This is not an equal situation. It's "asymmetric" to use the scrubbed "lite" term. The difference is that the government is authorized to use force to achieve its goals, like all governm

Who are you to impose you particular view of how the world should work on others?

Ah but they can impose their views on you, me, and everyone else? Because that is what it happen if RIM caves in. I don't think RIM will be able to keep my communications secret while allowing someone's communications in India to be monitored and read. I don't have any smartphone but if I had a Blackberry I'd switch to an Android, install encryption software and use webmail. I may even use anonymous proxies or TOR to access

If they abide by the laws of the land and provide the government of India access to Indian citizens' communications they're removing privacy from those citizens. Thing is that according to the Indian government their citizens aren't evidently entitled to that privacy. So RIM can "cave in" and abide by the Indian officials' demands but at the cost of a moral high-ground. Citizens lose, government wins, RIM maintains status quo.

Except that unless you limit it to Indian MobileMe users, no matter how you threaten them, Apple cannot feasibly provide the same service to the Indian government. The only reason RIM can is that all the email data going to your phone is stored by RIM's servers. In effect, RIM is acting as an ISP operating in India. All a user has to do is NOT use an Indian ISP and NOT use any other ISP that has agreed to their demands and that user will have encryption without government eavesdropping. It's such a low

RIM is on my do-not-purchase list.
Sorry, why? Which other provider offers end-to-end encryption a la Blackberry enterprise server?
Does Android do a better job? Nope. Windows Mobile? Nope. Apple? LMAO.
So basically you are boycotting RIM to support companies who never offered the level of security RIM -still- offers everywhere it can?

I would take that statement not as a fact, but rather, as a condition.

The medium does not equal the message. Okay, so the Indian government (just like the Sauds recently, and just like the US government since always) wants access to the medium. Good for the government, they get what they want, RIM gets access to a market that dwarfs the US, and the (few) the people who really do "deserve" privacy will use GPG or similar, and have privacy - The rest nev

No, they just want their emails/texts to stop being routed through the NSA's white-anglo Echelon program, they're just too afraid to say it openly. In 2007, France wasn't that shy about their complaints against RIM, the French government asserted that the US/UK/Canadian/Australian spying coalition was obtaining French corporate trade secrets that it could only have gotten through the RIM network (and considering the interesting anecdotes of the French leaking false information everywhere like the false plan

Ok, the Indian government can tell Blackberry to give up its keys for a particular encryption layer, but what is to stop people from using RSA 512-bit encryption with their e-mails? Wouldn't this force terrorists to pay attention to what encryption methods they are using?

Look pal, are you some kind of terrorist? Decent law abiding non-terrorist people don't use encryption. In fact, they send the contents of their inboxes to the authorities to make sure that they aren't inadvertently planning terrorist acts. Only evil bastards want encryption. Foul wicked scum who should be, and will be I promise you, taken out and shot, but not before torture... oh blessed torture... we'll attach battery cables to their testicles and drop vinegar in their eyeballs... oh yes... and as we strip them and kick them and dump water on them... oooh aahhhhhh

The criminals and terrorists are probably already doing that. The corporate businessman might be. The casual user most likely just assumes RIM is taking care of it and doesn't worry, and its them that's going to get shafted by number 2, allegedly in the course of fighting number 1.

One is that terrorism is kind of a bullshit excuse. India just wants the ability to easily monitor e-mails without any sort of oversight. It is an excuse not a reason to a large extent.

HOWEVER, you do find that people will often take the easy way out and just use what is included. I'm sure in your daily life you meet many people who understand fuck-all about security. Guess what? Terrorists are just people. They do not tend to have good central IT groups that enforce good standards on the organizations. The

Ok, the Indian government can tell Blackberry to give up its keys for a particular encryption layer, but what is to stop people from using RSA 512-bit encryption with their e-mails? Wouldn't this force terrorists to pay attention to what encryption methods they are using?

The problem is that the entire Blackberry infrastructure is built around them never having your decryption keys. The keys are generated by the customers, and stored on their own Blackberry Enterprise Servers and mobile devices. So, even i

"With just days before the deadline, BlackBerry's maker was shot down by India in its latest effort to avoid having its services cut off for about a million Indian users of the device. Research in Motion's effort to broaden the debate over data encryption were rejected. The Indian government wants access to users' emails.

Keep their hands off the emails.

The head of a powerful industry group in India accused RIM of taking the wrong approach to negotiations, saying, 'It need not have escalated to this level. Folks like RIM have to understand business is done differently here.'

So if they had to do something that was a crime that would be punished in Canada to be compliant with India, it's excusable?

So if they had to do something that was a crime that would be punished in Canada to be compliant with India, it's excusable?

I don't think for a minute that RIM wouldn't rather give it's customer data to any government that asks for it. Their only problem with it is one of public relations. RIM would prefer to be able to do whatever they want with their customers' data, including sell it to the highest bidder. They're just afraid that the people that give them money for their phones wouldn't like it.

until you get into the shoes of a company that sells equipment designed for deep packet inspection to a country that uses it to oppress it's people, then get sued by your own country for selling something that's perfectly legal in the country you sold it in.

unfortunately, you have to respect EVERYONE these days. or somebody will get a treaty signed that makes what you did illegal, and try to sue you for it anyways.

What I'd like to see would not be bullying of India in any way. It's simply a mutual agreement or a lack thereof.

RIM could say "as a soverign nation, you don't *have to* respect the privacy of your citizens, just like we don't *have to* do business with you. You could always develop your own domestic industry that operates in a way you find more tasteful and we won't lift a finger to try to stop you."

Besides, RIM is not India's only cell phone provider. No longer doing business with RIM would mean fewer choices. It would not mean no choice. It is not a "economic suicide" scenario. It's more like a scenario of "which is more import

True but many Indians use Blackberries and they'd be pissed if they could not use them anymore. Others, who have and conduct international business, will find their foreign contacts less willing to do business.

Um, I'm not sure if you meant to reply to me or the parent. I do agree that there is substantial middle ground (just like Google's situation in China). That's what I was getting at. I was responding to the AC's sarcastic straw man in kind.

If they're not willing to take a stand on this, most of their customers probably don't know the difference. If they do decide to stand up, they give India one of two choices:

Behave like a democratic government instead of a tinpot dictatorship, in which case this quietly goes away. No, they don't get to monitor, but secure methods of communication exist anyway. One more makes no difference.

Force RIM to stop operations over this-and explain to tens of millions of the most power

Behave like a democratic government instead of a tinpot dictatorship, in which case this quietly goes away. No, they don't get to monitor, but secure methods of communication exist anyway. One more makes no difference.

They're only asking for the same as the US government required, or are they on your tinpot dictatorship list too?

RIM doesn't have the encryption keys to data traveling over individual BES servers, so they will not cave and couldn't even if they wanted too.

In the case of the Saudis they found a way to come up with them. Maybe they changed the design of their system or built a new one from the ground up. Either way, they did in fact comply with the Saudi request that the government be able to eavesdrop by decrypting the communications. There's no reason to believe they couldn't do the same for India.

That's undoubtedly part of this issue. RIM has now established for itself a history of caving in. India has some grounds to expect that they can be convinc

Why should RIM even have the encryption keys? If they really wanted their customer's information to be secure, wouldn't they implement RSA in their communications? That way when governments come knocking, they can just say "Sorry, but these aren't the encryption keys you're looking for."

As I understand it from some RIM stories in the past, an organization could host their own servers that their blackberries talk to, and RIM would have zero access to be able to decrypt the contents in that case.

have you ever owned a RIM device?
they do a pretty good job of security. but yes, if you have a blackberry with an e-mail account from your provider, the mailstore is at RIM. as much as you may not like RIM keeping your keys, they might need to get into your mailbox to repair/troubleshoot/help you.

if you really want secure BB's, host a BES server, and you control the end to end encryption between phones and server. (and if you do so in india, you STILL need to provide a method to the gove

Near as I can tell this is all about the Blackberry Enterprise Server stuff. While organizations can run their own, RIM also runs it and you can subscribe to it. It encrypts communications from them to your phone and back, but then they have to decrypt it to be able to send it via e-mail. It isn't an end-to-end setup, BES is just an e-mail communication link for Blackberries.

Apparently neither do you. I'm willing to concede I might be confused, as I don't actually use this feature of the Blackberry. However a statement of "You don't know what you are talking about," without any clarification, reference, etc implies that you are either just being contrary, or are not confident enough in your knowledge to state it.

Regardless, it is a completely useless post to just say "You are wrong." Fine, the present your reasoning and what you believe to be correct. If you make a habit of jus

BES and BIS includes the MDS (mobile data service) which also encrypts most data. There are certain exclusions such as streaming technologies which may not go through RIM's infrastructure. But it is an end-to-end solution.

Now when a company hosts their own BES I believe that non-email data will still go through RIM's servers. Not sure if a company can host their own MDS servers though.

So that's what I know. I know that most people on/. will tear you apart for the slightest bit of misinform

I think India needs to understand that for a service like RIM's if the people purchasing it can't trust it to carry their own private thoughts/conversations, then people won't pay for the service anyway. It isn't a matter of security or not, it is a matter of privacy vs big brother government. I can respect that India has issues with terrorist acts and is in a geo-political volatile area with respect to their neighbor nations. But shutting down RIM's business because India doesn't have cart-blanc access to any email sent over the devices doesn't really do anything in terms of actual security as there are thousands of other ways to send the same information securely, including but not limited to free internet email systems, to even setting up their own private email server (which takes all of 1 hour to do) and running it out of a home or even a laptop, using any of the dozens of free dynamic dns systems available.

I think India needs to understand that for a service like RIM's if the people purchasing it can't trust it to carry their own private thoughts/conversations, then people won't pay for the service anyway...matter of privacy vs big brother government... I can respect that India has issues with terrorist acts and is in a geo-political volatile area... there are thousands of other ways to send the same information securely, including but not limited to free internet email systems, to even setting up their own private email server...dozens of free dynamic dns systems available.

I agree with what you say. Coming from India, let me add the following perspectives:

What you say is absolutely correct, however the Indian bureaucracy is legendary for its arrogant and corrupt ways. In fact, the closing statement of the article "... business is done here differently." should provide an invaluable insight. This is why most outsiders scratch their heads about how India functions. Above all, following protocols is a big thing in India. You have to navigate things in a very particular way -- grease and please everyone along the way and in a very rigid protocol. Follow that, and the merit of your case actually plays a very small role in getting you the meat. Ignore it, and even if you are the most qualified by a wide margin, you will be left outside.

Finally, the actual issue of the case is left far behind -- the bureaucracy will convert this into a nationalist patriotic jingoism (for example: RIM is being arrogant towards India.. blah...blah... discrimination...), once this happens (it already has to a certain extent) -- the conservative people will take the stage with rhetoric. Logic, reasoning, and sane questioning will be thrown out of the window.

It is sad, but unless the intellectuals in India start demanding more share of limelight and direct the discussion for its merit, I can only see a couple of options for RIM -- bend to the will and follow the sick protocol OR butt out and be made a public enemy in the eyes of the populace.

Another point that needs to be made is that foreign businesses doing business in India with Indian businesses will be at greater risk, and that can hurt the business. Sure, things are done different in India. They are different elsewhere when compared to India, too. It's the international business where one party is in India that will suffer. And there is also the perception that the corruption involved puts that very data they capture at risk, potentially leaking it to competitors for more of those handout

Or maybe it's just protectionism and they want to make things hard for RIM in an effort to develop some home grown alternative.

The problem with this rests with the WTO. If India allows domestic businesses to provide a service it has to allow foreign businesses to provide that service too. We've discussed stuff like this on/. before, how Antigua and Barbados I believe sued the US in the WTO because the US outlawed online casino gambling but some states run their own online gambling. These countries compl

As stated by the previous response, even if there is an ISP in between, if you are using your own server and have encryption running, the only thing the ISP has is the encrypted content that flowed through their lines, and even then, most likely do not even have that since it would be an enormous expense to log every packet that goes across the network to every endpoint on the system. So, all that means is the ISP only has a name, and possibly a fake name at that (or the name of someone else in the area who

Yeh, that's a funny thing. In Europe, we spent seven years building a movement and fighting software patents. In India, they were proposed, and fought over for three weeks, and discussed in the media for maybe one week, and the government retracted the software patents proposal.

The issue isn't over, but things are certainly done different over there. I discussed it with some locals there and they told me that foreign interference doesn't go down well. Not at all. Red Hat sent a letter to the Indian government saying that software patents are dumb. (Well done Red Hat! You were our only supporter!) Locals told me that Red Hat took a chance with that letter. Other companies that try too hard to pressure the government get kicked out.

The software patent battle there is still in progress there, but foreigners should be wary of their preconceptions of how lobbying is done.

As a Canadian, I'm happy to see RIM's success thus far, and obviously continued growth would need to take advantage of other markets, who have different laws. While it's not something RIM wants to do, I think they will eventually cave to India's demands.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, RIM is in business, not politics. It is not their place to try and change things in India, it is the Indians'. On the other hand, to be ethical, they cannot knowingly place responsibility on a different authority if it is known that they will then act unethically. Ultimately, I think it will be better for the Canadian IT market if RIM just holds their nose and makes it happen. This is simply not a battle they can, or should win. If Indians don't like the way their government treats their privacy, they need to change things themselves.

The catch is blackberries in india are, i assume, used a lot for outsourcing. I'm not sure north american IT companies that do business with indians would be too happy about this, either. So in that case, it would be an issue that directly affects local business.

I really, really hope RIM bites the bullet on this and either calls India's bluff or takes the hit and moves on. If they start selling the only real advantage they have (privacy/security) to any government that wants it, they'll all be begging for jobs at Apple within 5 years. They've already played footsie with the US, Canada and some other First World countries that at least go a little past paying only lip service to individual rights and freedoms. If they start allowing Third World countries to get

In India the government wants to have access to all communication to "obstruct and prevent terrorism". There is no "Bill of Rights" in India that grants the freedoms that exist in America and other countries. To do business in India you have to let the government have access. If you do not let them have access you cannot do business.

The US government is getting some info from RIM, but it does not include getting copies of email. BB is popular among foreigners coming to India to do business. If RIM is cut off, this will hurt India's ability to do business with the rest of the world that doesn't have this approach to government.

There is huge difference in the way Indians perceive terrorism when compared to Americans. Americans easily dismiss govt. efforts such as these in the name of privacy invasion. But, when you are closer to getting your ass bombed by a neighborhood terrorist, then privacy is the last thing on your mind. You will be actually grateful that your govt is pulling all stops to giving terrorist easy options to communicate and escape their radar. Terrorism in India is daily reality. Its more direct. US has not faced

The terrorists couldn't give a rat's ass about push email. They use it because it is there. [...] It's so easy to change ISPs that it is utterly naive to think that what you're talking about will have ANY real impact on terrorism.

Or, perhaps, just host their own mail servers? For $20/month you can get a virtual Linux machine. You could just play a shell game hosting the mail on a succession of virtuals.

You're assuming that governments don't already have a backdoor into all these services that you mention. They have done so. Read your terms of use and privacy policy for gmail, yahoo, etc. They specifically mention the fact that they will not hand over your stuff to anyone _unless_ the request is backed by a government agency (subpoena, state orders, etc.).

Turning over data in response to a subpoena is not the same thing as warrantless wiretaps, and turning over data in response to a subpoena from another c

If you think getting access to some Blackberry emails are going to solve any real national security problems, you're dreaming. But it can definitely be abused in the name of security.

There are already end-to-end encryption solutions for voice and SMS services. They're already available on multiple mobile platforms. And this isn't accounting for things like a secure shell or VNC client on a mobile device to get a protected machine with secured communications.

Frankly, it's the Indians who need to be telling you this. Globalization doesn't mean you get to pick and choose those attributes of trade which fit your needs best. When you understand this so well, why is it that we constantly hear angry voices from the USA about outsourcing, which is a direct result of globalization? Not a single India related post on slashdot is complete without an anti-outsourcing rant by some smartass. Why is it that I don't see guys like you replying to such people with something lik